Dexter can’t sing, but show’s star Hall does in genre-defying band
Michael C. Hall knows curiosity is one of the reasons why people turn out to see him perform with Princess Goes to the Butterfly Museum.
And the “Dexter” star is OK with that. “I kind of like that people show up maybe having some sort of looky-loo curiosity or preconceived notions and then blowing their minds,” he says. “That’s fun.”
Still, that doesn’t mean fans should walk up to the vocalist after a show and say something along the lines of, “Wow! That Dexter sure can sing!”
“Well, if they say that,
I’ll have to remind them that Dexter actually doesn’t really exist,” Hall says. “He’s just words on a page.”
Hall seems more concerned about the words that go into songs these days, as PGTTBM — the trio he fronts with keyboardist Matt Katz-Bohen and drummer Peter Yanowitz — recently kicked off its first North American tour.
Hall is the best-known member, having starred not only in Showtime’s original “Dexter” and the recent reboot, but also in HBO’s “Six Feet Under.” He also has an impressive Broadway pedigree, having appeared in “Cabaret” and “Chicago,” among other shows. Yet, the other two PGTTBM members also have impressive resumes and are highly regarded in their fields.
Yanowitz first came to fame as the original drummer for Jakob Dylan’s the Wallflowers. He then went on to set the beat on Natalie Merchant’s first three solo albums and work with such notables as Yoko Ono and legendary Beat Generation poet Allen Ginsberg. Katz-Bohen
has been performing and recording with Blondie for well over a decade, having first signed on with Debbie Harry and company for a 2008 tour. He has also worked with Boy George and Cyndi Lauper.
The three artists first crossed paths when Hall was playing the lead in “Hedwig and the Angry Inch” on Broadway in 2014 and 2015. Katz-Bohen and Yanowitz were also in the production, rocking out behind Hall as members of the fictional band.
Fiction would later turn to reality as Hall, KatzBohen and Yanowitz began gathering informally and making music as a trio.
“We just kept doing it and doing it without even really thinking about what it was,” Yanowitz says. “Pretty soon we had 10 songs, and it felt like it had its own momentum. We were like, ‘I guess we should think of a name or maybe play a show.’ Everything just sort of occurred to us much later down the road, like, ‘Oh, I guess we’re a band.’ ”
And thus Princess Goes to the Butterfly Museum was born, delivering the dreamy synth-pop debut single “Ketamine” in 2019.
Of course, the group had a lot of different options when it came to deciding
what type of music to make — especially given the varied backgrounds and expertise of the three participants. Yet, it seems the best decision was none at all.
“Luckily, we didn’t really have to decide. And we still don’t have to decide,” Katz-Bohen says. “It’s not like we are a genre band. We are not trying to make one type of music.”
The band members have come up with a couple of their own terms for describing the band’s sound — “kaleidoscopic sound weather” and “gothadelic rocktronic” — which are fun ways to say that the music draws from everything from classic glam rock and disco to modern electronic dance music and indie-pop.
“There’s no dearth of material,” Katz-Bohen says. “We have a lot to choose from. It’s kind of overwhelming.”
So don’t expect to hear Katz-Bohen and Yanowitz borrow tunes from their other endeavors at a PGTTBM show.
And that’s OK with Hall, who is certainly not itching to try out his best Debbie Harry impersonation on a cover of “Call Me.”
“Hell no!” he says. “I’ll leave that to the genuine article.”